Chisel Handles
dave caudill
>After not having a garage for a while I have been catching up on tool maintenance. Cleaned and sharpened some saws, now its time to get to all the chisels that I have been stockpiling. Not much to tell you about but I made a bunch of handles and thought I would show off a little and put some pictures here for everyone to see. Nothing special but its fun to take a chisel that hasn't got a handle and turn a new one for it. The four on the left are made of apple that I salvaged from a friend who was trimming an apple tree. Apple is wonderful to turn it is much like boxwood in how it turns. Very smooth and as I lie to say tunrs like butter. The others are made of hickory that a friend sent me from Illinois. Now Hickory turns different than the apple. Not nearly as tight grained. Much more porous like oak or ash. You don't get nearly the nice smooth finish you do with Apple but they still are nice handles.
I don't turn with anything in mind I just turn and see what happens. They're baically fashioned after other handles I have. I try to size them somewhat commensurate with the chisel size. And most of all I want them to feel good. As you'll notice I don't do leather rings on the tops of most of them. Apple and hickory are pretty good at taking blunt trauma so to me it wouldn't add much other than time.
Dave
